Optimism and Frequency Biases

Overestimating the frequency of something because we’ve seen it recently or memorably.

Humans have a number of cognitive biases that can lead us to distort reality and make bad decisions. One of these is called the Optimism Bias. It is the mistaken belief that we are less likely to experience a negative event than someone else. Games can emphasize this bias by overegagerating other people's loses. Because we see other people losing when we aren't, we may get the mistaken impression that we are more skilled or lucky than other people. If we feel like we are exceptionally skilled at a game, we will keep playing.

Another cognitive bias is towards more recent or memorable information. This is the mistaken belief that events that happened in your recent memory are more likely to occur again in the near future. We overestimate the frequency of something happening because it is memorable to us. When a game shows that other players just got a rare item, it gives us the impression that this could happen to us soon, even though the odds haven't changed.

The Clustering Illusion is another tendency for people to erroneously overestimate the significance of short winning streaks and see phantom patterns in random data where there aren't any. A game that proclaims to give random rewards could in fact secretly have a tendency to give rewards in streaks to emphasize this cognitive bias.


Examples

Mighty DOOM Mighty DOOM
"You don't have any stats screen, so you can't see numbers of wins/losses."

Coin Dozer Coin Dozer
"An "aw" sound plays if a prize goes off the side of the board."

Hero Wars - Men’s Choice Epic Fantasy RPG Hero Wars - Men’s Choice Epic Fantasy RPG
"jackpot loot boxes are shared via ingame chat"

Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp
"Their newly added "together" event was failed by the players, which was never mentioned and just hidden away."

Baseball Superstars 2020 Baseball Superstars 2020
"there is a box at the top of the screen that displays the winnings of other players summoning rare trainers."

Roblox Roblox
"Roblox itself does not, but many of the games within do."

Ulala: Idle Adventure Ulala: Idle Adventure
"In the team section, the game shows only victories made by your team, where the AFK point is, and good items your team receives. No losses are shown on this menu."

Rec Room Rec Room
"not loses but wins"

Stumble Guys: Multiplayer Royale Stumble Guys: Multiplayer Royale
"When i lose and wait till the end, the game tells someone wins the match and hides the lose players"

Fortnite Fortnite
"You must win, if you win you get a crown that is shown in game, if you win twice in a row you get a crown victory royale. If you lose you lose the crown and the affect over your head."